We’re starting off with a very short one for the first week. This text was published in 1915, two years before the October revolution, and is sadly still highly relevant in the imperial core.
This reading group is meant to educate, and people from any instances federated with Lemmygrad are welcome. Any comments not engaging in good faith will be removed (don’t respond to hostile comments, just report them).
You can post questions or share your thoughts at any time. We’ll be moving on to a new text next week, but this thread won’t be locked.
You can read the text here.
That’s not what i said. I said that this particular conception of Ukrainian national identity (as it began to be popularized after 1991 and has been forcefully imposed since 2014) is one which came from Western Ukraine. You may disagree but from my understanding of history this specific conception of what it means to be Ukrainian is clearly rooted in the Bandera-Shukhevych Ukrainian nationalist movement.
And Russian language was spoken all the way to Lvov. This is not an argument. The question is what is the majority language and culture, and that is not so easy to answer because it depends on where you draw a line that is to a degree somewhat arbitrary. Is Surzhik a Russian or a Ukrainian dialect? What distinguishes Ukrainian from Russian culture? Some people even argue that Ukrainian is (or started out as) a dialect of Russian: https://en.topwar.ru/193115-ukrainskij-jazyk-narechie-russkogo-jazyka.html That’s probably going too far but again, where exactly do you draw the line? I prefer not to get into these sorts of linguistic debates, my point is merely that there is a lot of ambiguity here.
And why was it necessary for post-Maidan Ukraine to begin such a harsh repression of the use of Russian language, suppression of Russian books and other media, etc. if it was an insignificant minority? https://softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Nationalism/Ukranian_nationalism/supression_of_russian_language_in_ukraine.shtml
I don’t doubt it. At that time the definition of Ukrainian was different, it was not yet the fanatically anti-Russian identity that is now promoted by Ukrainian nationalism. At that time it was still possible to identify as Ukrainian in the sense that you live on the territory of Ukraine, and still speak Russian, identify in part with Russian culture and history, belong to the traditional Ukrainian Orthodox Church (not the fake one invented by the nationalists) which is now banned etc.
The situation is not comparable. Hong Kong and Taiwan are officially part of China. Russia does not consider Ukraine part of its territory. And if Taiwan did attempt to officially declare independence China would almost certainly respond very forcefully.
The closest comparison would be if China didn’t consider Taiwan as part of China but had good relations with it until the US one day replaced Taiwan’s government in a coup, Taiwan started to heavily persecute its ethnic Chinese population (unrealistic because they are a vast majority but let’s say for the sake of argument they weren’t), suppressed the use of Mandarin Chinese, waged an open war on a part of its own population while building up an enormous army, and openly declared intentions to join a US led military alliance that refused to rule out the placing of nuclear capable missiles on the territory of Taiwan. In what world would China just sit by and do nothing?